A resident of a small town on the Volga, Khvalynsk, Alexander Glukhov worked for about 12 years as a cook for the top officials of the Soviet state in Barvikha. After leaving government service in 1989, he returned to his homeland to work in a small cafe in Khvalynsk and help his elderly parents.

He believes that he got into this prestigious job by accident. After graduating from culinary college after school, he got a job as a cook at the Svetlana sanatorium on the Volga, in the Saratov region, where the talented culinary specialist was noticed by employees involved in supporting the livelihoods of senior officials - members of the Central Committee and the Politburo - and invited him to work in Moscow.

In order to get on the staff, Alexander Glukhov had to fill out a lot of questionnaires. For seven months, the authorities checked all his relatives and ancestors up to the seventh generation. “One knee a month,” jokes Glukhov. The story of Brezhnev's former cook is told by the Versiya newspaper.

In Moscow, he was immediately sent to improve his qualifications, and in the process he graduated from the Moscow Institute of National Economy. Plekhanov with a degree in food preparation technology engineer.

Kremlin eaters loved crayfish soup

Glukhov was only 23 years old at the time, but his internship in supporting roles was short - he was soon trusted to prepare the main dishes. Alexander Glukhov fed the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Leonid Brezhnev, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Alexei Kosygin, members of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee Dmitry Ustinov and Alexander Yakovlev, secretary of the Moscow regional party committee Grishin.

“Once, I remember, I, still a very young cook at that time, was hired to serve a hunt,” recalls Alexander. “Was I worried? Of course, like any normal person. But I tried not to show my excitement.”

For Brezhnev, Alexander cooked a roast from a whole roe deer on a spit. To keep the meat soft and tender, it was poured with olive oil. The Barvikha cooks never had any problems with food, but despite this, they hardly prepared exotic dishes.

All high-ranking wards respected Russian cuisine. The initiative was also welcomed. In particular, Kremlin eaters especially loved crayfish soup according to an old Russian recipe, which Alexander found in a cookbook published in 1812. "A strong fish broth is prepared, set aside, then the crayfish are boiled in a separate saucepan. The tails are set aside. The shell is rubbed through a fine sieve, butter is added and boiled for about five minutes. The broth is seasoned with crayfish tails, and added to the plate just before serving the resulting crayfish paste,” Glukhov tells the secret of preparing the dish. The taste of the soup, according to Alexander, is simply unearthly.

Brezhnev liked to take his medications with vodka

The kebab recipe for Dmitry Ustinov, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, looked like this: young pork is soaked in kefir. There is no stable kefir-pork ratio, since Glukhov prepares all his dishes “by eye.” “I almost never taste the food I’ve prepared,” says the cook. “Over many years of work, my hand itself takes as much salt, pepper or sugar as it needs. Sometimes I throw a pinch into the pan and realize that there’s still quite a bit left on my fingers.” It seems like you can add it to the pan - to be honest, little will change - but your hand doesn’t rise, it throws the remains into the salt shaker.”

Sometimes responsible workers went down to the kitchen to personally make adjustments to the process of preparing gourmet food. Ustinov, for example, personally filled his fish soup with vodka - he didn’t trust anyone. By the way, he poured a little vodka into his ear - 100-150 grams per two-liter saucepan. Ustinov ate this real fish soup exclusively with a painted wooden spoon. For his captivating simplicity and “Russianness,” the service staff called him grandfather behind his back.

Alcoholic drinks, mainly vodka, of at least 13 varieties, were a mandatory attribute of the table of Politburo members. Leonid Brezhnev himself preferred to take his medications with vodka: it is better absorbed this way. His preferences in this regard were limited to Zubrovka. It became a drug for him, and the guards had to dilute Zubrovka with boiled water. Although this does not mean at all that Brezhnev or any of the other dignitaries of Barvikha lost face during the feasts.

Despite the abundance, the highest party officials knew how to drink. Never once, according to Alexander, did he see his charges intoxicated. “People knew how to drink,” says Glukhov, “but needless to say, it’s not like it is now.”

In Barvikha we often had dinner at 12 at night

Each nomenklatura company necessarily had its own personal doctor, who took samples from all the dishes prepared by the Barvikha chefs, and also compiled a menu every three days. No one demanded unnecessary zeal from the cooks, and preparing a Kremlin dinner took exactly the same amount of time as a simple one.

However, it was difficult to adapt to the work schedule of high-level officials. Often we had to serve dinner around 12 o'clock at night, sometimes later. While the officials have eaten, while everything has been cleaned up, you can go home and not leave. Often we had to spend the night right in Barvikha, Brezhnev’s former cook shares his memories.

Glukhov had two technical assistants subordinate to him, but the title of chef requires a lot, so Alexander did most of the kitchen work himself. Sometimes I had to peel potatoes, cut meat, and gut fish. There were no complaints about his work, quite the opposite. The cooks were often invited to the table and respectfully asked for recipes for the dishes they liked.

But with Mikhail Gorbachev coming to power, the staff at the government residence in Barvikha began to change, and other people came. The cooks were fired one by one. Glukhov did not talk about the reasons that prompted the new head of state to act in this way. “The man brought his team, what’s wrong with that?” - he says.

Glukhov himself left the special canteen, and generally the 4th Main Directorate, in 1989. By that time, a lot had changed in Barvikha: in Gorbachev’s time, the village council distributed local lands, if not in hectares, then in acres for the estates of the nouveau riche. Along with the system of land allotment, services flourished and strengthened, which were not in sight in Soviet times, but which bear the proud label - “Kremlin”.

After his dismissal, Alexander worked in the capital for some time - even had his own business at the dawn of the cooperative movement. But then he went back to his homeland - to Khvalynsk. He returned, as he explained, to help his elderly parents. At first I was still eager to go to Moscow, but over time I abandoned this idea. “I’m alone with my parents. Besides,” says Glukhov, “it doesn’t matter to me where I work. Food should bring joy. It doesn’t matter to whom and where: in the government canteen in Barvikha or in a small cafe in Khvalynsk. I know myself how master, and I don’t need anything else. And those who know me come to eat with me from neighboring regional cities and from Moscow itself. They don’t forget.”

Kremlin sanatorium

The sanatorium belonged to the “Kremlin” 4th Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Health. The stellar history of the village and the sanatorium of the same name began back in 1918, when the leader of the world proletariat Vladimir Lenin fell in love with relaxing on the banks of the Moscow River near Barvikha. This is how Maria Ulyanova wrote about these trips: “We chose a secluded place on a hill, which overlooked the river and surrounding fields, and spent time there until the evening.”

Now this clinical sanatorium "Barvikha", although it belongs to the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation, is available to ordinary vacationers. During the Soviet era, only the leading elite of the USSR used this site of national importance to improve their health, hunt and confer.

The sanatorium, which celebrated its 70th anniversary last year, began treating snoring, insomnia and obesity, positioning its services as “a combination of the achievements of Kremlin medicine and a high level of comfort.” But there was no place for a real Kremlin chef at this celebration of new life.

Chapter:
Dishes of the Kremlin cuisine
6th page

MEAT DISHES

Kremlin chefs not only use culinary recipes from many sources, but also create them themselves. Their exquisite dishes are truly works of art, and the chefs themselves are simply culinary artists.
The Kremlin kitchen provides both the organization of ceremonial banquet tables and the usual daily meals for employees, children's and individual dietary meals.
All dishes on the Kremlin table are the fruit of long analysis, discussions and endless tastings of the highest class culinary specialists, health doctors and nutritionists.

Tongue in vegetable sauce

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 1 beef tongue, 60 g lard (rendered lard), 1 onion, 1 carrot, 50 g parsley, 30 g celery, 2 bay leaves, 10 black peppercorns, 2-3 cloves, 2-3 teaspoons vinegar , 1 tablespoon of sugar, 30 g of flour, 150 g of sour cream, 1 tablespoon of mustard, zest of 1/4 lemon, salt.

Preparation

Boil the tongue until half cooked (for 2 hours) with sliced ​​vegetables, adding lemon zest to the water after boiling.
Stew the onion in lard, adding spices, salt, vegetables, vinegar, and put the peeled tongue there. Add the broth in which the tongue was cooked and simmer until tender.
Remove the finished tongue, and after the water has boiled, fry the vegetables for 5 minutes, add 700 g of tongue decoction and boil for another 6-7 minutes. Strain the juice, rub the vegetables through a sieve and stir with the broth.
In a separate bowl, brown the sugar and add it to the liquid with vegetables.
Stir flour, mustard, sour cream in a cup, add to the liquid with vegetables and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Meat baked in lard

Ingredients
For 6 servings: 1 kg of beef, 300 g of lard, 1-2 onions, 2 eggs, 100 g of feta cheese, 50-100 g of red wine, 1 bunch of parsley, salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation

Season a cut piece of beef with salt and pepper. Cut the lard into thin long strips, wrap them around the beef and tie everything tightly with strong thread. Fry in a frying pan on all sides until golden brown.
Remove the meat and fry finely chopped onion in the remaining fat. Beat the yolks, adding water, salt and parsley. Grate the cheese there.
Place all this in a frying pan, stir and add the meat, previously pierced in several places with a fork.
Pour in red wine and place in the oven.
Simmer until done.

Meat rolls with cabbage

Ingredients
For 2 servings: 2 beef chops, 1 pickled cucumber, 200 g sauerkraut, 20 g smoked sausage, vegetable oil, spices, garlic to taste.

Preparation

Roll a long slice of pickled cucumber into the meat in the form of a roll, adding spices and garlic. Tie with a thread or secure with a wooden skewer, lightly fry in vegetable oil, add water or broth and simmer until tender.
Rinse the sauerkraut with water in a colander, finely chop the smoked sausage and add to the pan with the rolls.
Simmer until the cabbage is ready.

Boiled tongue with sauce

Ingredients
For 2 servings: 400 g of tongue, 1 onion, 1 glass of dry white wine, 1 bay leaf, 1 clove bud, 5 black peppercorns, salt to taste.

Preparation

Place the tongue and onion stuffed with cloves and bay leaves in a saucepan. Dissolve salt in wine, add pepper and pour on tongue. Add water until the tongue is covered with liquid.
Cook covered for 3 hours over low heat.
Remove the tongue from the pan, rinse with cold water and peel off the shell.
Place the tongue in the broth and boil for another 20 minutes.
Cut the finished tongue into thin slices and pour over the sauce.

Veal on mushrooms

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 1 kg of veal, 500 g of mushrooms, 300 g of cream, 1 onion, 100 g of cheese, salt to taste.

Preparation

Wash the veal, cut into portions, soak in cream for 1-2 hours.
Sort the mushrooms, rinse, cut into large pieces. Small mushrooms can be used whole rather than chopped. Peel the onion and finely chop. Grate the cheese on a fine grater.
Place a layer of prepared mushrooms on a baking sheet, then a layer of onions, salt and sprinkle with grated cheese, place pieces of veal soaked in cream and place in an oven preheated to 200°C.
After the crust appears golden brown, pour cream over the meat, reduce the oven temperature to 180°C and bake for another 40-50 minutes.

Veal "Continental"

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 700 g veal, 1 large tomato, 100 g fresh mushrooms, 1 onion, 1.5 tablespoons butter or margarine, 1.5 tablespoons flour, 300 ml beef broth, 1 tablespoon tomato paste, 1 bay leaf, ground white pepper and salt to taste.

Preparation

Fry the veal in butter. Remove the meat. Put flour in a frying pan and grind with the meat juice released during frying, adding broth.
Peel the tomato and cut into pieces. Peel and cut the mushrooms into thin slices. Finely chop the onion.
Place all this in a saucepan and pour in broth mixed with flour. Add tomato paste and bay leaf. Heat without covering until boiling. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Place the fried veal in a saucepan with mushrooms and simmer, uncovered, in the oven until cooked (ready veal should be easily pierced with a fork).
Serve with boiled rice or noodles.

Pork in wine and cream sauce

Ingredients
For 1 serving: 1 pork chop, 1 clove of chopped garlic, 1 tablespoon of sour cream, 1/2 glass of dry white wine, 1 tablespoon of grated cheese, salt, pepper.

Preparation

Beat the pork, add salt, and lightly fry on both sides in vegetable oil. Add wine, simmer covered until done.
Then sprinkle garlic, cheese, and sour cream on the meat. Cover with a lid and simmer for 5 minutes until the cheese melts.
The remaining wine is mixed with sour cream and cheese sauce.
Delicious!

Pork with mushrooms under a fur coat

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 0.5 kg of pork, 300 g of mushrooms, 2 medium onions, 3 cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons of hot chili ketchup, 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise, 2 fresh cucumbers, 4 tomatoes, 2 fresh apples.

Preparation

In a deep frying pan, fry the mushrooms until half cooked, thinly chop the pork, onion, garlic, add ketchup and mayonnaise. Fry everything, stirring, for 10 minutes.
Next, cut the tomatoes and cucumbers into thin slices, place them on top, and then place the apples in thinly sliced ​​slices. Without disturbing, close the lid and fry for 10 minutes.
Serve with dry white wine.

Dairy veal medallions
with fried vegetables and cherry sauce

Ingredients :
200 g veal, 30 g oyster mushrooms, 10 g onions, 20 g eggplant, 20 g zucchini, 20 g bell pepper, 20 g grapes.
For the sauce: 30 g frozen cherries, 30 g red wine, 10 g butter.

Preparation

Process and pound the veal. Fry mushrooms with diced onions. Stuff the veal with the prepared mushroom mixture, wrap it in foil and bake in the oven until cooked.
Cut the finished veal into medallions.
For garnish Cut the vegetables into large cubes and fry in vegetable oil until cooked.
For the sauce evaporate the red wine along with the cherries, add meat broth (30 g) and bring to thickening with butter.
Serve like this: place fried vegetables in the center of the dish, next to them are veal medallions with mushrooms. Pour over the sauce and garnish with herbs.

Roast pork with spices

Ingredients
Serves 6: a piece of sirloin (approximately 900 g), 1 teaspoon salt, 3/4 teaspoon dried thyme, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper, a pinch of ground nutmeg, a pinch of ground cloves, 175 ml dry white wine, 150 ml chicken broth, thyme sprigs for decoration, green peas and apple sauce (optional).

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Pat pork dry with paper towels.
In a small bowl, combine salt and the next 5 ingredients: thyme, cinnamon, ground black pepper, nutmeg, cloves. Rub this mixture over the pork.
Place the meat on a small baking tray. Bake the meat for about 15 minutes.
Transfer the pork to a plate and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, pour the wine onto a baking sheet and bring to a boil over high heat. Pour in the broth and bring to a boil again. Boil for 2 minutes.
Skim the fat from the juices in the pan. Thinly slice the pork.
Decorate and serve, pouring meat juice over it.
Can be served with peas and apple sauce.

Roast beef

Ingredients
For 2.5 kg of beef (thick edge): 1 carrot, 2 onions, 1 parsley or celery, 8 black pepper grains, 4 bay leaves, 2 teaspoons ginger, 0.5 cup sour cream, 1 teaspoon salt, 1.5 a glass of kvass.

Preparation

Wash the beef, remove films and bones. Trim the fat from it, cut it into small pieces, place it on a preheated frying pan or baking sheet, melt, pierce and fry the whole piece of beef in it until it is covered with a crust.
Sprinkle with finely chopped carrots, onions, parsley and crushed spices, then put in the oven and pour a little kvass over every 10 minutes, turning all the time. Roast in the oven for about 1-1.5 hours.
5-7 minutes before the meat is ready, collect all the juice in a cup, add 1/4 cup of cold boiled water to it and put it in the refrigerator.
When the juice has cooled, remove the layer of fat from the surface, heat the meat juice, strain, add sour cream. Serve as a sauce for roasts.
Remove the finished beef from the oven, add salt, let it cool slightly (15 minutes), then cut across the grain into pieces, pour over hot meat juice and serve.
Roasts are not served cold or heated.
The side dish can be fried potatoes, boiled or stewed carrots, turnips, rutabaga, fried or stewed mushrooms.

Zrazy in Russian

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 600-700 g pork, 200 g chicken giblets, 2 onions, 100 g butter or margarine, 600 g fried potatoes, hot tomato or onion sauce, salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation

Cut the pork into thin slices, add salt and pepper and lightly fry. Boil chicken stomachs and heart in salted water and grind together with the liver in a meat grinder, add fried onions, salt and mix well.
Place the resulting minced meat into slices of meat, wrap it in the form of bricks, fry, add a little hot broth or water and simmer under the lid until cooked.
Serve with fried potatoes and spicy tomato or onion sauce.

Unusual cutlets

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 500 g pork, 2 eggs, 1 heaped tablespoon of starch, 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise, salt, pepper.

Preparation

Cut the pork into 1x1 cm cubes, add all other ingredients. Spoon the mixture into a frying pan with heated vegetable oil and fry like regular pancakes.
Serve with side dish.
You can do the same with chicken, veal and beef.

Lula kebab

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 1 kg boneless lamb, 100 g fat tail fat, 4 onions, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, 1 teaspoon dried basil, salt to taste.

Preparation

Peel the onion and grind it together with 50 g of lard in a meat grinder. Cut the remaining lard into small pieces. Wash the lamb, cut into pieces and also grind in a meat grinder. Add onion and lard, mince everything together again. Season the minced meat with pepper, basil and salt. Knead for 7-8 minutes. Then beat thoroughly, cover with cling film and put in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Make sausages 12-14 cm long from the minced meat, string them onto skewers, alternating with pieces of lard. Fry over coals or in a hot frying pan, turning constantly, for 20 minutes. Plum sauce goes very well with lula kebab.

Crayfish soup
according to an old Russian recipe from a cookbook from 1812,
which was found by Alexander Glukhov, who worked as a cook for 12 years
at the top officials of the Soviet state in Barvikha

All ingredients to taste.

Preparation

Boil strong fish broth, strain and set aside.
Then boil the crayfish in a separate saucepan. Remove the tails (crayfish necks) and set them aside.
Grind the cooked shells thoroughly in a mortar and rub through a fine sieve, add butter and simmer over very low heat for 5 minutes - you get a crayfish paste.
Season the broth with crayfish tails (crayfish tails), and add crayfish paste to the plate just before serving.

Lamb chakhokhbili

Ingredients
For 2 servings: 300 g lamb, 2 medium onions, 2 large tomatoes, 2 tablespoons tomato paste, 1 teaspoon vinegar, 1 tablespoon red wine (madeira, port), 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, ground black pepper, salt to taste.

Preparation

Chop the meat into pieces of 30-50 g. Place in a saucepan. Add peeled and finely chopped onion, tomato paste, vinegar, wine, oil. Pour in 4 tablespoons of water. Mix everything well.
Simmer covered until the meat is tender. Stir 6 minutes after the start of simmering.
Chop the tomatoes, put them in the meat and simmer for another 20 minutes.
Let sit before serving.

Lamb cutlets with cheese

Ingredients
For 2 servings: 300 g of lamb, 100 g of white bread, 1 egg, 1-2 cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons of grated sharp cheese, ground black pepper, salt to taste.

Preparation

Grind lean lamb. Add the egg, crushed garlic, soaked and squeezed stale bread, salt and pepper. Mix everything thoroughly.
Form an even number of cutlets from the resulting mass, sprinkle half of them with cheese and cover with other cutlets on top so that the cheese is not noticeable.
Fry the cutlets in a frying pan until done.

Lamb cutlets “Fantasy”

Ingredients :
600-800 g of young lamb meat (ham pulp), 500 g of boiled milk, 100-150 g of medium-sized mushrooms (champignons), 1/2 glass of white wine, 1 glass of lamb broth, 60 g of butter, 1 tablespoon of flour, 1 lemon, salt, ground black pepper, parsley.

Preparation

Peel the meat from films, cut into 4 cutlets, beat each lightly, place in a porcelain or enamel bowl and pour in hot milk, dissolving 1/2 teaspoon of salt in it.
After 15 minutes, turn over and leave for another 15 minutes.
Roll the prepared cutlets in flour, quickly fry in very hot deep fat, remove from the frying pan and put back into the bowl, pour in the wine and simmer over medium heat for about 10 minutes, then add broth and continue simmering. Having brought the cutlets to softness, they must be removed and transferred to a heated plate without covering the middle. Serve fried potatoes or stewed rice as a side dish. Pour sauce made from fat, flour, lemon juice and seasoned with black pepper into the middle of the plate. Sprinkle everything with finely chopped parsley and serve with a salad of green onions, hard-boiled eggs and parsley.

Siberian dumplings
differ from other dumplings in that they are frozen before cooking - this gives the minced meat a special juiciness, but can be cooked without freezing

Ingredients :
1 egg for greasing, 1/4 cup sour cream and 1-2 tablespoons butter.
For the dough: 1.5 cups flour, 1 egg, 6 g salt, 1/2 cup water.
For minced meat: 200 g beef, 250 g pork, 2 onions, salt, pepper and sugar to taste, 1/2 cup water, minced meat yield - 560 g.

Preparation

Pour the sifted flour onto the table in a mound and make a funnel-shaped depression in it, into which pour water mixed with eggs and salt. Liquid (water, eggs) must be taken strictly according to the norm based on 1 kg of flour 400 g of liquid; When kneading, the liquid is quickly mixed with flour.
Knead a stiff, homogeneous dough, and to make rolling easier, let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes.
Roll out the prepared dough into a long strip 1-2 mm thick and 40-50 cm wide and brush with egg. Along the entire length of the dough, 3-4 cm from the edge, spread the minced meat into 5-6 g balls at a distance of 2-3 cm from one another.
Cover the meat balls with the edge of the dough, press the top layer of dough with your hands to the bottom around each ball and cut out the dumplings in the shape of a crescent with a metal notch 3 cm in diameter. Place the dumplings on a baking sheet sprinkled with flour and place in a cold room.
Preparation of minced meat. Cut the beef and pork (or lamb) into pieces and mince them, add sugar, salt, pepper, water, minced onion and mix everything.
Boil the dumplings in salted water (for 1 kg of dumplings, 4 liters of water, 40 g of salt) at low boil for 8-10 minutes.
Many people prefer to eat dumplings in Siberian style, pouring them with hot sauce (mustard mixed with vinegar, preferably grape).
You can serve the dumplings with butter or sour cream and table vinegar.

Rabbit in wine sauce

Ingredients :
1 rabbit (weighing about 1.5 kg), 100 g smoked loin or brisket, 1 onion, 1 clove garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 cup chicken broth, 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, 1 cup (200 g) dry white wine, a pinch of dry rosemary, white pepper on the tailbone of a knife. 2 egg yolks, 3/4 cup cream.

Preparation

Wash the fully processed rabbit, dry it and cut it into portions.
Cut the loin and peeled onion into cubes. Peel the garlic, chop and grind with salt.
Heat chicken broth.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and thoroughly brown the rabbit pieces on all sides. Add the loin and chopped onion, fry them until translucent, stirring continuously.
Sprinkle with flour and pour in broth. Add garlic, wine, rosemary and pepper and simmer the rabbit, covered, for an hour.
Then take it out and put it in a warm place.
Shake the yolks with cream, add 4-5 tablespoons of meat juice from the saucepan, remove the saucepan from the stove and mix the yolks with the meat juice. Pour this sauce over the rabbit.
Serve with white bread or potato croquettes.

Rabbit in an envelope with greens

Ingredients :
1.5 kg rabbit hindquarters, 4 thin slices of smoked lard (about 60 g), 1 kg pea pods, 20 g butter, 5 tablespoons vegetable oil, salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation

Cut each rabbit leg in half and the back of the carcass into 4 parts. Sort and rinse the pea pods, dip them in salted boiling water (so that the water barely covers them on top) for 3 minutes, then drain in a colander, rinse with cold water and let the water drain.
Heat butter and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a saucepan. Fry pieces of rabbit meat in it on all sides over medium heat. Lightly salt and pepper, add water and simmer for 15 minutes.
Place 4 large squares of foil on a greased baking sheet. Grease them with oil. Place a layer of pea pods on each, a piece of ham and a piece of rabbit meat on top, cover with slices of lard. Having connected the edges of the foil, twist them so that the resulting envelope does not unfold.
Place in a hot oven and bake until done (about 40 minutes).
Serve by placing the envelopes on plates.

Rabbit stew

Ingredients :
1 rabbit, 150 g smoked brisket, 250 g mushrooms, 350 g small onions, 2 large onions, 2 cloves of garlic. 1 small glass of cognac, 300 g dry red wine, 200 g sour cream, 100 g butter, 2 tablespoons mustard, 2 tablespoons flour. 1 tablespoon sugar, herbs, salt, pepper, tarragon sprig

Preparation

Heat a little oil in a frying pan and fry the peeled, thinly sliced ​​mushrooms
Cut the prepared rabbit into 4 parts.
Melt 50 g of butter in a frying pan and fry the boiled brisket. Transfer it to another bowl and put it in a hot place. And fry the pieces of rabbit meat in flour in the same frying pan. Douse the rabbit with cognac and set it on fire.
Then add dry red wine and let simmer for a few minutes. Place a bouquet of greens, add salt and pepper, cover with a lid and cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.
Place the remaining butter and small onions in a saucepan, add cold water, add powdered sugar and put on fire. Simmer over low heat until the water has evaporated and the onions are caramelized (about 20 minutes).
Place the liver, brisket and mushrooms in the roasting pan with the rabbit and keep on fire for another 20 minutes.
In a bowl, mix mustard and chopped tarragon. Combine with caramelized onions and meat juice formed when cooking the rabbit.
Place the rabbit pieces on a heated dish, garnish with onions, liver, brisket, and mushrooms.
Drizzle the sauce over the fricassee and serve hot.

Hare in a pot

Ingredients
For 4 servings: 1 hare carcass, 200 g lard, 1/2 cup 9% vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 1 cup raisins, 1 cup prunes, 12 small onions, cumin, salt and ground black pepper taste.

Preparation

Soak the prepared hare carcass for several hours in vinegar diluted in half with water. Let dry and cut into pieces.
Cut the lard into small pieces and melt in portioned pots where the hare will be roasted. In the resulting fat, fry several heads of small onions until golden brown.
Then put pieces of hare in each pot, add water so that it slightly covers the meat, add caraway seeds, salt, pepper and put the pots in the oven.
At the end of cooking, add washed, seedless raisins and prunes, soaked until soft. Simmer everything together a little more in the oven.
Serve the hare meat hot, in a pot.

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A special cuisine has existed in the Kremlin since Stalin times. The place where the food of the gods is prepared was periodically modernized, but a global restructuring took place under Pal Palych Borodin.

Since then, the holy of holies of the Grand Kremlin Palace has corresponded to the latest word in culinary technology. Only one thing has not changed: the special kitchen is still a secret facility and is under the jurisdiction of the Federal Security Service...
During the Soviet years, the kitchen, together with a special base for serving top officials, was part of the 6th department of the 9th directorate of the KGB. And everyone who worked there, from the cooks to the servants, had the shoulder straps of state security officers hidden under their white uniforms. The culinary parade was commanded by GB Colonel Gennady Kolomentsev, who joined the system as a private under Stalin and retired under Gorbachev.

As you know, people were not accepted to work in the KGB from the street. And people with an impeccable biography were always selected for this object, which personnel officers studied especially carefully, almost under a microscope. After all, the staff of the special kitchen, as Kolomentsev put it, were even closer to the country’s leadership than the security guards; they stood at the door during meals.
Vladimir Evdokimovich Bondarev, a young chef in the capital's Bucharest restaurant, in 1969 received a postcard sealed in an envelope in the mail asking him to call about work. He was a party member, had a fifth grade and a good profile. Still, the verification took several months. So Vladimir unexpectedly became a state security sergeant. Both the kitchen manager and the chief technologist were officers. The chef, for example, had the rank of captain.

Vladimir Bondarev - KGB sergeant, 1970

Immediately after registration, the new employee was warned that the work, especially about the top officials of the state who would have to be served, should not be discussed. Therefore, except for his family, no one knew what he was now preparing for the top of the CPSU.
“Despite the fact that I had the fifth category in the restaurant, in the special kitchen at first I felt like a peteushnik,” recalls Vladimir Evdokimovich. - Great masters worked there, real aces, who started under Stalin. They knew the special secrets of Russian cuisine, which they sometimes shared with young chefs.
In a restaurant, each chef has his own specialization. There are soup makers - specialists in first courses, gravy boats, confectioners, and so on. The special kitchen was staffed by generalists who could do absolutely everything, including churning ice cream. This skill was especially required on trips, when two or three chefs served a certain “object”: at a dacha, at a resort, and so on.
“Objects” were called members of the Politburo and candidates, and each had its own serial number: zero one, zero two. Of course, everyone in the kitchen knew whose name was hidden behind the faceless number, but order is order.
Members of the Politburo were supposed to have three cooks, and candidates were content with two. They worked in shifts. The working day was irregular; it could start at half past seven in the morning and end late at night. Quite often there were unforeseen business trips and urgent departures. Since the daily routine of the top officials was traditionally not disclosed, the staff of the special kitchen was constantly on alert.
Vladimir Bondarev always took with him to his service in the Kremlin a suitcase with essentials: a razor, a change of underwear. They could call: get ready, in half an hour a car will come for you. Sometimes I didn’t have time to warn my wife not to wait for dinner.

Wherever I had to work! And in theaters, and in stadiums, and on trains, and on ships. But it didn’t happen on airplanes. On trains, high-ranking passengers were cooked in a separate kitchen in a special carriage. At the Bolshoi Theater at the premiere of the opera “The Dawns Here Are Quiet” in 1975, a whole team of cooks was busy. During the intermission, spectators from the government box headed to the banquet hall, where, in addition to a variety of snacks, hot chicken was waiting for them.
When large receptions or conventions were served, chefs from Moscow restaurants were invited to help. There were so many different dishes being prepared that it was impossible to eat all this culinary wealth. What was left was given to the “Chaldeans” - the waiters - to be eaten. The poor fellows worked up a beastly appetite, inhaling for hours the wondrous aromas of luxurious dishes and not being able to have a bite to eat.
There was a tragicomic incident with one waiter, who, on the way from the kitchen to the St. George's Hall, where the banquet was being held, decided to quietly steal a piece from the dish and almost died. The food went down the wrong throat, the man began to choke, and they barely pumped him out. I had to urgently call the doctor on duty for help.
They fed Politburo members for 400 rubles a month. At that time, when a kilogram of sturgeon cost only five, that was a lot of money. The candidates ate twice as modestly. If party bosses did not fit into the allotted amount, they paid extra from their own pockets or went into the next month’s budget. Everything was very strict.
Very high demands were placed on the quality of food. The sample was taken by a sanitary doctor. If the cook made cutlets, he would give one small one for inspection. The products were placed in a special container and placed in the refrigerator for at least a day. You never know! True, there were no cases of food poisoning.
Leonid Ilyich loved Russian cuisine and especially kurnik. The basis of the kurnik is puff pastry, on which rice, chicken, mushrooms, herbs, and eggs are placed in rows. All this is laid, in turn, with pancakes.
This chicken pot was ordered to cook Bondarev by the wife of Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov, who at that time was a candidate member of the Politburo. Either finances in the family were tight, or because of special savings, Ustinov’s wife brought the leg of a dead chicken to the cook at the dacha in Zubalovo. How to get out of this situation? Should I add more sauce and spices? I had to use my imagination.

One of the ceremonial Kremlin dinners

Despite the fact that the party elite did not have exotic eating habits and preferred to eat without any special frills, unforeseen incidents occurred. The reasons were not hidden in the sophistication of taste, but rather in the conservatism of the old communists, which extended to food.
Having become accustomed to the handwriting of the previous cooks, they stubbornly did not want to change anything in their usual menu and tenaciously clung to simple culinary recipes. For example, the Secretary of the Central Committee Konstantin Katushev - the first “object” of Vladimir Bondarev - preferred Siberian dumplings made from the finest dough to all dishes. You could eat a lot of these dumplings.
“For a year and a half I served the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Grechko, who was also a member of the Politburo,” says the former Kremlin cook. - I must say that the minister had a tough character, and I have more than once seen how red generals fly away from him, like crayfish.
One day Andrei Antonovich arrived at the dacha in the evening and demanded scrambled eggs for dinner. “Are you going to have dinner alone?” - "One". I took a special stainless steel portion frying pan. Whoever invented these frying pans should have his head torn off! It is impossible to fry on them - everything sticks. I cooked some scrambled eggs. Grechko calls. I come in, he’s angry and scary and says: I don’t need this restaurant business! Make me scrambled eggs, like in Zavidovo for Leonid Ilyich. I had to redo it. And then the granddaughters came running to the table. “Tell the chef thanks,” Grechko said.

In Zavidovo, where Brezhnev, as you know, loved to go hunting, two brigades were being trained. One fed all the guards and attached persons, the other fed Leonid Ilyich himself. For the arrival of the Secretary General, they cooked fresh soup on pork bones with carrots and potatoes. After the hunt, which was always successful, hunting trophies, previously cut up by the rangers, were brought to the kitchen. Well-fed and satisfied, Brezhnev entered the kitchen, personally thanked the cooks, and even kissed some of them three times, according to Russian custom.
So, the scrambled eggs for the “most” were quite simple. In a large cast-iron frying pan, large pieces of lard were fried until golden brown, which were then filled with eggs. And the entire high company happily devoured this simple dish.
Another time, the formidable Marshal Grechko ordered fried pies with potatoes for breakfast. Vladimir Evdokimovich went to great lengths: the pies turned out great - fluffy and rosy. But the family just turned up their noses: we don’t eat those! The situation was saved by the old cook, who once fed the family. It turns out that in this house they were used to pies that were rolled out with a rolling pin like tongues, and really turned out incredibly tasty, crunching with a fried crust in the mouth.
Once, while on vacation in Crimea, Grechko wished for khachapuri. In fact, thirty-liter bottles of “Khvanchkara” and hot, piping hot khachapuri were delivered to him by special plane from Leselidze. But for some reason they didn’t send it. The marshal was not pleased in the sanatorium kitchen: instead of elegant Georgian pastries, they turned out to be giant cheesecakes with cheese. Vladimir Bondarev had to urgently call Anna Grigorievna Dyshkant, who fed Khrushchev’s family, and find out the recipe.
“By the way, Grechko died under strange circumstances,” says my interlocutor. - After dinner, he went to his room; it was not customary to disturb the owner of the house. And in the morning the family did not wait for Andrei Antonovich for breakfast. The granddaughters ran and found their grandfather in a chair. He was dead. Death occurred about eleven o'clock in the evening, shortly after dinner. The official reason is heart failure. Most likely, this was the case, but death at a facility is always an emergency, so the entire staff was shaken up. Fortunately, I no longer worked there. So God took it away.

When the all-powerful Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine Pyotr Shelest was transferred to Moscow to the post of First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which was, of course, a demotion, Vladimir Bondarev was seconded to serve his family. The Shelestys, like true Ukrainians, adored borscht and dumplings. Moreover, Ukrainian borscht not only contains lard, but also differs in color. That dark red color that adorns this soup is boiled to a pale shade in the real Little Russian version.
“If my shift fell on a day off,” my interlocutor smiles, “I knew that I would have to make dumplings with cherries.” I had to make a huge amount, sprinkling the finished dumplings with granulated sugar to prevent them from sticking together. The dough was rolled out very thin. The house had a supply of canned pitted cherries. The whole family sat down at the table: Shelest himself and his wife, sons and daughters-in-law, and a whole pouring basin flew away with a whistle.
The relationship between the “object” and the servants, as a rule, was purely business, although the cook had close contact with a high-ranking family and sometimes saw housewives in negligee. But the distance was always maintained. Their wives turned out to be much more fastidious than the husbands famous throughout the country, who strove to look into each pan under the lid and make a comment.
When duty fell on the New Year, the head of the family would certainly go into the kitchen and congratulate the staff. They often gave me a bottle of champagne. Grechko, for example, particularly emphasized Soviet Army Day. For this holiday, each cook received fifty rubles.
In those days, it was customary to invite leaders of friendly countries on vacation, who were treated to gastronomic delights by chefs of special cuisine. Our leaders also willingly visited the neighborhood. The leaders came with their families.

The chefs thought for a long time about how to please the Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, Erich Honecker, and decided, in addition to traditional Russian appetizers, to serve stewed cabbage with sausages. The sausages from the special shop were excellent. And the Germans literally swept them off the tables.
The Iranian figure Muhammad Reza Pahlavi was served thick piti soups made from lamb, seasoned with peas, potatoes and carrots. He was so pleased with the food that he gave the cooks a skin of astrakhan fur.
“We didn’t have to sunbathe at resorts,” says Vladimir Evdokimovich. - As soon as it gets dark, you quickly run to the sea, having previously agreed with the guards, otherwise there were “signals” everywhere - such thin wires. During the season, foreign guests replaced each other.
As soon as Husak left, they announced to us: Ceausescu was arriving with his wife and son. There are about fifteen guards with them. Our girl waitresses cried when they were served. She walks with a heavy tray and the guard grabs her.
When this team got drunk, something unimaginable happened. With them was captain Ion Popa, who, having had too much alcohol, lost his briefcase with money and documents. One of our compassionate people found it and gave it to him. Ion Popa stood behind us the whole time while we were cooking. It was very unpleasant. And Ceausescu, in my opinion, ate what the Romanian cook cooked for him.
Vladimir Evdokimovich cannot forget the giant beluga, which was sent to Defense Minister Grechko as a gift from one military district. The hundred-kilogram fish was carried with difficulty by four soldiers. The cooks had to cut the beluga with a saw in order to clean it up in the cellar. Then the delicious product was boiled, fried, baked until Grechko was bored to death with fish cuisine. “Cut it up and take it for yourself,” he finally commanded.
Despite the fact that in those not very well-fed years, employees of restaurants and grocery stores did not leave work without stuffed bags, employees of the special kitchen did not allow themselves anything like that. Not the least role was played, of course, by the total control inherent in all divisions of the KGB.

You were allowed to eat at work, but take it with you - no, no! The staff also did not have access to the luxury of the special base, which supplied excellent products; even money could not buy anything. But for major holidays - November 7, New Year and May 1 - orders were placed: tongues, pike perch, jellied legs, caviar.
In a special kitchen, Vladimir Evdokimovich rose to the rank of senior sergeant of the KGB in seven years, and received the sixth rank of chef already in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, where for several years he prepared the famous julienne and other dishes. His snow-white uniform is still in perfect order. The jacket, apron, towel and, of course, cap are always washed and smartly ironed. From time to time, the former Kremlin chef works at receptions and dinner parties. His clients know a lot about Russian cuisine. And in this matter, the senior sergeant is a patriot, no matter who you look for.

The history of Kremlin cuisine goes back a little less than a hundred years. Strictly speaking, it appeared thanks to the revolution

History of Kremlin cuisine

In 1918, the government of the young Soviet state moved from Petrograd to Moscow. The country's top officials and their families settled in the Kremlin, and a special catering plant was created to serve them. At first they organized a small buffet, then they opened a full-fledged canteen in building 14. Access there was limited to a limited number of people. Over time, it expanded, but the Kremlin cuisine itself as a social institution became increasingly closed, acquiring numerous myths and legends. Iz.ru looked into the details.

The Soviet aristocracy, barely born, wanted to have all the best at its disposal. This fully applied to food. The authorities were well aware of the terrible famine in the Volga region and Ukraine, of food riots in villages and cities, but they themselves ate excellent food. There was plenty of meat and fish, butter and cheese on the table. Perhaps only under Lenin a certain asceticism was preserved in the life of the party elite. Even today in Leninskie Gorki you can see cheap enamel dishes with chips on the edges and a rusty saucepan, which was sealed by Ilyich’s personal driver. After the death of the leader of the world proletariat, life behind the Kremlin wall changed radically.

Under Stalin, large-scale banquets for the party elite, representatives of the Soviet elite and foreign guests became common. This required the creation of appropriate infrastructure. A regular supply of high-quality products from different parts of the country was established to the Kremlin, and it was not interrupted even during the Great Patriotic War. In the 1960s, under the Administrative Office of the CPSU Central Committee, their own subsidiary farms appeared, providing the country's main kitchen with meat and milk, fish and poultry, vegetables and fruits. This practice continues to this day. Today, subordinate enterprises include, for example, such significant agro-industrial complexes as Voskresensky and Nepetsino. True, along with the Kremlinsky food plant, their products are supplied to retail chains throughout the country, but invariably have the distinctive sign “Kremlin quality” on the label.

All products that came to the table of the top officials of the state were thoroughly checked, while others were completely prohibited for use. Mushrooms, as well as some types of game, such as bear meat, were considered potentially dangerous from a very early time. In addition, peas, beans, honey and many types of nuts were not welcomed, although not so much for medical reasons as for sanitary and hygienic reasons. It was impossible to allow distinguished guests to suffer from gas or develop allergies. A similar practice continues today - the quality of permitted products is closely monitored by employees of a special unit of the FSO.

Back to the Future

On the other hand, qualified personnel were needed to organize banquets. Under Stalin, they began to be selected from among the cooks and waiters who had worked in famous Moscow restaurants back in tsarist times. These specialists from the hospitality industry not only ended up in the Kremlin (of course, after a thorough check by state security agencies), but ensured continuity between pre-revolutionary and haute Soviet cuisine. It is not surprising that in the Kremlin banquets of the Soviet era much was reminiscent of the large feasts of the Moscow merchants.

First of all, this was manifested in the basic principles of organizing the table. The meal was demonstratively plentiful, and the amount of food on the table grew in direct proportion to the general well-being of the country. Thus, according to experts, in the Brezhnev era, each participant in a two-hour banquet consumed approximately 3 kg of food. Of course, it was impossible to eat such a quantity of food. Yes, there was no such task. The abundant feast served primarily a representative function, clearly demonstrating the greatness and power of the government.
It was customary to cook whole sturgeon, piglets, and pheasants stuffed with all sorts of things. They were displayed on huge trays on long ship-like tables along with numerous snacks, pastries and fruits. Large dishes were a kind of calling card of the Kremlin banquet. Superbly executed, they were nevertheless not intended for food - only for beauty. Food for guests, exactly the same, was served separately on utility tables. There were also alcoholic drinks, mainly vodka and cognac, and the waiters themselves served each table.

Recipe “Krucheniki “Volynskie”
Cooking method:
Wash the vegetables, peel, cut into strips and fry. Then add sauerkraut and simmer until done. Rinse the tenderloin, clean it, cut it into portions, beat it, sprinkle with spices. Place minced cabbage on the chopped tenderloin, wrap the edges of the meat inside with an envelope and shape it into a sausage. Cut the brisket into rectangular strips and fry. In a hot frying pan, fry the tortillas on all sides and bring to readiness in the oven. When serving, place the fried brisket on the kruchenik.

In the 1980s, the Kremlin began to save money. Gradually they stopped serving whole sturgeon, and then sturgeon was completely replaced with pike perch. Both wood grouse and stuffed piglets are a thing of the past. Now they were simply fried and chopped in portions. But there were plenty of products left, and their choice and quality were excellent even in the difficult 1990s.

It should be borne in mind that the traditions of the Kremlin cuisine did not always correspond to the personal gastronomic preferences of the top officials of the state. Many representatives of the Soviet elite, who rose to the heights of power from the very bottom of society, did not have developed taste and were not picky about food. In their daily lives, they ate completely ordinary meals, although they were prepared by very experienced personal chefs. It is known that Stalin loved cabbage soup, despite the fact that he was constantly treated to Georgian dishes. Khrushchev, as befits an avid hunter, on occasion could feast on deer or roe deer, but at other times he was very happy with fried potatoes and pickled cucumbers. Brezhnev loved kurnik with rice and chicken and scrambled eggs with lard, which his personal chefs in Zavidovo often prepared for him. Gorbachev had little interest in food at all, but was fond of a variety of baked goods, so at some point his wife Raisa Maksimovna was forced to ask the Administrator to exclude it from the menu. Yeltsin preferred roasted meat on the bone. He also willingly ate dumplings and veal sausage with pistachios, but invariably refused exotic dishes.

"Chicken Galantine"


We wash the chicken fillet, cut it into pieces and pass it through a meat grinder once. Beat the mass and add butter, puff pastry, egg yolks and then pass through a meat grinder three times. Let the mixture rest in the refrigerator at +5 degrees. After this, scroll two more times and cool. Beat the whites and, stirring slowly, add them to the mixture, add salt and chopped peeled pistachios. Take some food paper and grease it with butter. We place the prepared mass of galantine on paper, roll it into a sausage, twist it into gauze and tie it tightly like a sausage. Place galantine sausages into boiling salted chicken broth and cook for 50 minutes. Then we take out and remove the gauze and paper. Give shape and cool.
Serve with orange sauce. To do this, squeeze the juice from the orange. Finely chop the lemon zest into strips and boil with sugar. Then add gelatin and orange juice.

Everything was done with utmost care. According to the recollections of the President of the National Association of Culinary Artists of Russia, Viktor Belyaev, who worked in the country’s main kitchen for more than 30 years, one and a half hundred capercaillie stuffed with meat and dried fruit could easily be prepared for an ordinary Kremlin banquet. They were baked after first removing the feathers. Each feather was thoroughly washed and then reinserted for decoration. Likewise, the famous ice caviar bowls, which invariably amazed foreigners, were made anew each time: they were cut out by hand in the shape of the battlements of the Kremlin walls, and even tinted with beet juice. It was hellish work that required complete dedication and good health. It sometimes took several days to prepare one banquet. The cooks did not even go home at this time, but slept only four to five hours a day.

Despite the abundance of food, the menu itself remained relatively modest all the time. Typically, each participant was given two or three appetizers, two soups to choose from (if it was lunch), two hot dishes (fish and meat) and dessert. For example, the banquet menu dated February 27, 1967 included granular caviar, kalach with vizig, salmon in jelly, guinea fowl galantine, salad, borscht broth with spicy croutons, asparagus cream soup, stuffed navaga, fried lamb with vegetables, coffee, almonds and fruits. The only exceptions were some national holidays such as the anniversary of the revolution or the New Year. So, on December 31, 1963, on the table, in addition to caviar, pickles and fruit, there was stuffed pike perch, lampreys, salmon with lemon, crabs, jellied pig, assorted poultry and game, cabbage salad, stellate sturgeon in sauce, trout in white wine, shish kebab deer, creamy parfait and cakes.

“Sturgeon in a monastery style”
Recipes of Kremlin cuisine from Viktor Belyaev

Fry sturgeon pieces in a frying pan. Prepare the fat sauté and dilute with boiling fish broth until thick. Then add sour cream, salt, ground pepper and cook until tender. Cut the onion into thin half rings and saute until tender. Boil the champignons, cut into thin slices and fry. Boil a chicken egg. We clean the crab meat from cartilages. Cut pre-boiled and cooled potatoes into slices.
Take a portioned frying pan, pour the prepared sauce onto it and place a fried piece of fish on top. Place potato slices around the edges. Place sauteed onion, a quarter of a boiled egg, crab meat and champignons on top of the fish. Pour thick sauce on top, sprinkle with grated cheese, place in the oven at +180 degrees and bake until golden brown. When serving, sprinkle with chopped dill.

The heavy “ships”, behind which dozens of people sat, were replaced by small round tables for five or six people. Equally, full plating has given way to strictly European-style portioned serving. Much attention is paid to the design of each dish - it has become lighter and even more restrained compared to the baroque heaviness of Soviet culinary aesthetics. But the main thing is that the gastronomic component itself has changed.

In the 2000s, the French tradition dominated at Kremlin banquets, because in Moscow it was considered the best in the world, then it was replaced by the Italian one. The cooking was either done by foreign chefs or by those who had long and extensive internships abroad. At some point the pendulum swung in the other direction. Thanks to the young chef Konstantin Makridin, Russian delicacies again appeared on the table: sterlet, goose, venison with berry sauce, beetroot soup, kulebyaka and even pancakes, only very tiny ones, with a spoonful of caviar or a piece of lightly salted fish.

Today, interest in high Russian cuisine in its current version is gradually growing - in the form in which it is successfully presented to the world by the younger generation of Russian chefs in the person of Vladimir Mukhin, Ivan and Sergei Berezutsky, Anatoly Kazakov, Sergei Eroshenko, Georgy Troyan and others. They are increasingly invited to special dinners for distinguished guests.

The return to national tradition is expressed not only in the cuisine, which is also based on high-quality Russian products. Since 2012, only domestic wines have been exhibited at all official events; fortunately, today there are already many worthy producers in Crimea and the Krasnodar Territory. We are talking about such farms as “Abrau-Durso”, “Vedernikov Winery”, “Divnomorskoye Estate”, “Lefkadia”, “Massandra” and others.

Another relatively recent innovation was the pre-rehearsal banquet. According to Igor Bukharov, who headed the Kremlevsky food processing plant during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, today there is a multi-stage approval system in place. The specific idea for the banquet is proposed by the plant management directly to the Presidential Protocol Service. If approved, it is worked out in detail. A few days before the event, a general run-through is organized with full table setting, type of dishes, bouquet design, selection of wines and serving of each dish. And only after final approval does full-scale preparation for the holiday begin. “In Soviet times there was nothing like this. Everything went according to plan. We knew exactly what to do and how to do it. We were simply given a task, but no one controlled its execution,” admits Viktor Belyaev.

Alexander Sidorov